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Monday, November 16, 2009

Morning Market Report

The markets ended last week on an up note. The Dow was up 73 points. It was up about 2.5% on the week. It looks as though it will start the week on a higher note as well. The Dow is currently up about 70 points. The S&P and NASDAQ are up similarly. GDP growth numbers for Japan, which had the country growing at 1.2%, are pointing futures upward. Also, APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) followed suit of the G20 last week, and promised to maintain economic stimulus as the economies begin to recover.

Crude oil is up this morning nearly a dollar a barrel. It's currently trading at $77.41, but that's still way down from about a week and a half ago. Gold continues to test all time highs and it's currently trading at $1129 a pound.

Meanwhile, General Motors is making plans to pay back its government loans. It will pay back $1 billion the coming quarter and pay back $1.2 billion every quarter there after. The CEO of GM, Fritz Henderson, calls this a sign of "stability". We'll see. GM will release it's previous quarter's earnings report later today.

Meanwhile, the health stock market hasn't dampened things in bonds. The ten year U.S. Treasury bond is currently at 3.39%. That's down about 13 basis points (thirteen hundredth of a percent) from its highs of 3.52% about a week and a half ago. Mortgage rates aren't out yet but expect those to be solidly below 5%. The yield spread between the two and ten year is still tightening. It's now at 2.58%. That's a tightening of almost ten basis points from last week.

The markets all around the world have opened on an up note. In the Far East, it was an across the board sweep up. The Hang Seng in China was up 1.73%, the NIKKEI in Japan was only up .21% (only given the GDP news), and the Straits Time Index in Singapore was up 2.08%. In Europe, the FTSE in London is up 1.29%, the DAX in Germany is 1.45%, and the Spanish Index is up .78%.

The dollar is weak today. It's down by .38% against the Euro, down .3% against the British Pound and down .1% against the Japanese Yen.